Tap dance today is as marginal to popular culture in America as it was in 1960. Why has so delightful and exhilarating a dance style as tap been so resistant to revival?
Tag: 01.19.16
Trailer With Matisse, Chagall, Miró Works Inside Stolen In L.A.
The 24-foot-long, rectangular 2005 Haulmark trailer disappeared Nov. 20 from an industrial park near Nordhoff Street and Alabama Avenue … [LAPD] art investigators said the trailer and roughly $250,000 in precious cargo, including art works by Matisse, Chagall, Miró, Haring and Neiman, were stolen. (Wait – all that was worth only $250,000?)
National LGBT Museum Abandons Plans For D.C., Sets Sights On New York
“Tim Gold, who co-chairs the board, said organizers looked north after learning the museum would not be eligible for tax breaks in D.C. and searching unsuccessfully for a location near the National Mall.”
The Futurist Chinese City That No One Went To Live In (Until Now)
“The district of Kangbashi in Inner Mongolia, … widely labelled a ghost town, stands as a cautionary tale of over-investment, home to grand feats of architecture and real estate that rose out of eagerness and ambition, but never received [a] human population … In the last few years, however, Kangbashi has actually witnessed an influx of new residents.”
And What Have Iran’s Mullahs Banned From Books *This* Time?
“Iran’s culture ministry has decided to censor the use of the word ‘wine’ and the names of ‘foreign animals’ and dignitaries from any books published in the Islamic Republic. The new rules are designed to protect Iranians from what the regime calls a ‘cultural onslaught’ by the West.”
Fort Worth Symphony Musicians Authorize Strike; Management Makes Final Offer
Management’s plan, which they say they will implement unilaterally if musicians don’t approve it on Friday, “cuts musician pay by 8.4 percent and trims vacation and weeks of work, but won’t reduce the number of concerts in a season. Members say they took 13.5 percent cuts five years ago and shouldn’t face more because the city and economy are growing again.”
Stripper Karaoke Is Portland’s Latest Contribution To The Culture
“Perhaps the most unlikely pairing in live performance has become a Sunday night favorite of [the hipster mecca] – and it’s starting to spread across the US. Our correspondent visits Devil’s Point Strip Club, originator of the trend.”
Philly’s New Theater Center Is Ready For Opening Night
The Drake – just behind the Kimmel Center on Spruce Street, once an Art Deco hotel and apartment building – is the new home for five of the city’s small companies, “who felt the need for place, permanency, and identity, stepped in quickly to establish a theatrical world amid the ghosts of dance and the bustle of a reviving downtown.”
An Anarchist Education: The Unlikely History Of Tolstoy College
“Tolstoy College was an educational community based on the anarchist principles espoused, late in his life, by the author … It ran from 1969 to 1985, and was part of a project by the president of [SUNY] at the time, Martin Meyerson, to transform the Buffalo campus into the ‘Berkeley of the East,’ a quest for prestige and higher enrollments that required something of an image change for a university in a freezing steel town suffering the effects of a long economic decline.”
Stiffed New York City Opera Ticketholders Will Finally Get Refunds
“Nearly 670 people had bought roughly $323,000 worth of tickets for performances that were canceled when City Opera went bankrupt in 2013” – and they’ll be getting their money back from NYCO Renaissance, the group that’s reviving the company.